Quotes About Nonconformity

If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. That's the world of hicks and slobs. Real people would be ashamed of themselves doing that.

I love pop culture -- the Rolling Stones, the Doors, David Lynch, things like that. That's why I said I don't like elitism.

Si leyera lo mismo que los demás, acabaría pensando como ellos.

I've been an outsider all my life. It's been kind of hard, but I like that way of living.

Pero así como no hay que temer a los moldes, tampoco hay que tener miedo de romperlos.

Where Watanabe and I are alike is we don't give a damn if nobody understands us… That's what makes us different from everybody else. They're all worried about whether the people around them understand them. But not me, and not Watanabe. We just don't give a damn. Self and others are separate.

It isn't a question of intelligence. I'm not all that bright, I just have my own way of thinking. That's why people get disgusted with me. They accuse me of always bringing up things that are better left alone. If you try to use your head to think about things, people don't want to have anything to do with you.

If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. That's the world of hicks and slobs. Real people would be ashamed of themselves doing that. Haven't you noticed, Watanabe? You and I are the only real ones in the dorm. The other guys are crap.

On my end-of-the-year report card all she wrote was "Is disruptive in class. Colors outside the lines. Talks out of turn." When I showed it to my parents, they read it out loud to me, and my mom said, "Good for you, sweetheart." And my dad gave me a little pat on the back.

HARHARBLOODY HAR. Put that in your pipe hole and smoke it, society!

The only description for Nolan in the script was that he's a very bad dresser. I put on a red windbreaker and every other ugly, ill-fitting thing I could dig out. He was potentially written as a clean-cut nerd, but I wanted a darker spin.

People like to put you a box. I've always been the wrong shape. Maybe you are, too. I think all the people who are wrong shapes for boxes should go out and march into the streets singing, 'We are the shapes! We don't fit the box.'

I can be lazy, don't get me wrong. But it's not laziness that's holding me back, it's the system where I don't fit in.

I've never felt like I fit in. I always feel like I'm walking in the wrong direction or swimming upstream.

I was an absolute idiot, wearing polo-necks, reading Kerouac, watching Woody Allen movies, and jazz fitted right into all of that. My interest in that whole world became very genuine, but perhaps started off a bit affected - a mixture of right and wrong reasons. I was always drawn to non-commercial music, perhaps pathologically so.

The one lesson I've learned from technology and food is the only time you know you're doing the wrong thing is when you're doing what everyone else is doing.

I never wrote music for the mainstream.

It's liberating to wear clothes that are outside the boundaries of what I'm supposed to wear, ya know, based on the traditional model, whether that be a country music singer, or being from the country. It's not a rebellious thing.

Screw them. Yeah. But not literally. I'm not advocating promiscuity.

Yeah, but if you're not doing what everyone else is doing then you're going to be misunderstood. People are going to wonder why you're trying to be different; it's just a natural instinct.

I obviously identify with the anti-authority figure. I've pretty much always had problems with authority, ever since I was a kid. But, yeah, it's not identifying, I think it's more a part of my natural DNA that I question anybody who has a plan. Everybody's got to have an angle; that's the way I grew up.

All I'm interested in is liberating sound beyond all tradition.

I know some people like to follow the tradition, and that's who they are. That's not me.

Not a lot of people take advantage of that opportunity of being different. A lot of kids that are highly touted coming out of high school, like, doing the traditional thing and going to the blue bloods and all that, but I was always different growing up.